Shodo Master
by twowritehands
Summary: Saito practices the traditional Japanese art of shodo  calligraphy  and one day, he uses Cobb instead of traditional rice paper.


**Shodo Master**

Filling the prompt:

.com/inception_?thread=9302115#t9302115

Saito practices the traditional Japanese art of Shodo (calligraphy) and one day, he uses cobb instead of traditional rice paper.

...

"That ink?" Dom asked, lifting his chin to better see over the edge of the bed. Saito's smile pushed dimples into his scruffy jaw. He continued to rub a black stone in the pool of water on a small grinding block. Dom returned his head to the cradle of his arms, inhaled the scent of Saito's laundry detergent. It wasn't as overpowering as the kind Dom's ever-thoughtful mother-in-law had stocked his basement with like he didn't know how to pick up Tide once in a while.

Saito's dark eyes swept to him and back, and the dimples returned. "What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing," Dom said serenely. "Just waiting."

"Almost ready," he said, running the words together over a tongue that preferred the taste of his native language. Dom's eyes always sparked when he heard the accent heavy in simple sentences like that, and he resisted the urge to touch him, to show gratitude in receiving his words instead of Saito's; if he touched Saito then this little project would be forgotten.

The pool of water had blackened under the stone, and now looked like tears of the night beyond the windows that were framing the tranquil businessman lying half naked across the bed, his upper torso extended to reach the floor where he worked. Dom's eyes left the new ink and followed the pleasing line of working muscles in Saito's wiry arm, to his strong shoulder, to his back, where one or two birthmarks upset the symmetry and made Saito's skin something to be studied, learned.

Once again, Dom resisted. Lips to those birthmarks would certainly derail the challenge. Far be it for him to forfeit the game like that.

At last, Saito finished with the ink and sat up with a fast, energetic twist that pulled at the fitted sheet beneath them and excited Dom's skin with the rush of air and bounce of movement. He adjusted like-wise, more slowly but no less gracefully, until he was lying prone before the shodo master, suddenly ticklish with anticipation.

Saito wet the brush in the ink, and smirked at Dom, dark eyes glinting and dimples sinking. "What do you want me to write?"

Dom placed a hand behind his head, exposing his ribs and underarm hair to present a broad canvas. He smiled as he rocked his head into a comfortable cradle in his palm, thinking. With a shrug, he suggested, "Us. How this happened."

The brush moved eagerly to Dom's skin but paused half an inch away. A soft smile touched his thin lips, and dark eyes moved to Dom impishly. "Where do I start? Limbo?"

"If that's where it started," Dom said with a hint of surprise, eyes glittering, fixed on Saito's face, always reading. "Or all the way back to the first day we met."

"If that's where it started," Saito replied, echoing Dom's words precisely for the convenience, to avoid English conjugation. Dom blushed, aware that truths had been traded old school. God, he'd forgotten what it felt like to _earn_ a secret.

He'd foolishly trapped his closest hand under his head, and he had to keep his torso still, but he couldn't resist bringing a knee up, to rest against Saito's, just to touch him.

It was just a knee clad in gym pants pressed against a general degree of Saito's outer thigh but it had the same reaction as any touch Dom offered his friend. First it got a look (a complete facial expression when in private like this) a look of mild amusement laced dangerously with greed. _More_, that look said. But then it became a _why_? That one was harder to see, cloaked so cleverly in amusement like it was just a game. But Saito's brow posed the question. _What did I do to deserve this affection?_

As they learned together on nights like this, Saito was beginning to understand that he won these little gifts just by giving something first in return, even something as small as English for the dumb American boy. (Ten years with Mal, Dom had learned how to positively enforce this. But she'd played the game as well, and had miraculously taught him French.) Maybe one day, Saito would condition a third language into Dom.

But tonight, he was just going to write it on him.

After taking a moment to think with his eyes studying his available canvas, a sharp breath of air zipped into Saito's narrow nostrils; his down-to-business sniff. He rolled the brush between his fingers until the angle was correct, and then he smoothly, lightly, painted a curving line across Dom's first rib. The ink was cold but after a few more dashes and slashes, he could feel it drying thickly on his skin in the wake of Saito's hand.

The architect smiled and watched the brush strokes, chin tucked in, blue eyes veiled with wonder at the foreign shapes of words he wanted to learn. Saito read quietly after one neat line was painted along Dom's side.

"Our story begins on a train..."

...

Left to right, top to bottom, softening muscle was decorated with the sometimes crooked, sloping lines of cursive kanji, capturing their story in more than painted words. It was there in mistakes, where, ticklish, Dom had ruined a word below his left pectoral, or the place where a word fell into the little well of his bellybutton (unimportant word anyway, Saito had said.) It showed most on Dom's right side, where an hour after completing, the ending was nearly scrubbed off by accident from a lot of touching to reward Saito for a full story spoken completely in English.

"Dammit, the end was my favorite part!" Dom said, looking down at the sweat-and-ink smears, mind sweeping hungrily over the dual memory (one of their actual first date, that the knaji described and then one from just a little while ago when Saito had squeezed the last line into place over the left side of Dom's ribcage, his voice thick, his tongue loose now and managing a clearer slur of syllables. "And then, as promised to me by the man with eyes like water and heart like storm, we behaved as young men together.")

"Is it the ending?" Saito panted wisely, failing to supply the needed undertone to pull of Wise Old Master because his body wanted to breathe more than talk. He rested his forehead on Dom's and they tried to breathe the same empty gasps of air. The skin of their foreheads wrinkled together when they both lifted their eyebrows, and it felt good somehow, like a different kind of kiss. "I believe our story has just begun."

**fin**


End file.
